Heiserite ✝️ 🇦🇺

A (probably not yet fully baked) thread on Yahwist Canaanites. 

The most obvious Canaanite Yahwists were the children of Israel. No historician, theologian or archaeologist denies that there were a group of people who emerged in Canaan during the late Bronze Age who worshipped a deity called Yahweh. Conservatives say they came up from... 

...Egypt as the Exodus tells us, liberals say they were just a Canaanite group who adopted the deity Yahweh from their southern nomadic neighbours in Midian and/or Edom. 
As a supernaturalist my instinct is to side with the conservative, but it is interesting that Moses does...

...not seem to know the name of His God until the burning bush incident *in Midian*. This is not to say that Abraham's children before the Exodus were not worshipping YHWH, they may have been worshipping Him by another name
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...El

Have a look at Exodus 6:3 "I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as El Almighty, but by  My name YHWH I was not known to them."

The traditional interpretation seems to indicate that while Abraham did worship YHWH he did not know His name but went by the name El. 

There is a different translation by Francis Andersen that has the opposite meaning to the accepted view: “I am the Lord (YHWH). ?3 I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai. And my name is the Lord (YHWH); did I not make myself known to them?”

Just so you're aware.

Who is El? Well in Canaanite religion he is the head of the pantheon of gods at the start of the Baal cycle. Canaanites worshipped a god called El.

El was the primary creator, he created the other gods in the pantheon. He was portrayed as a wise elder type of deity who was merciful and kind. However in the Baal cycle he is usurped by Baal the cloud rider (a storm deity).

Some scholars have suggested that the Baal cycle...

... is showing a transition from worshipping El, to worshipping Baal. Which made me wonder, was there a percentage of early Canaanites who worshipped the same El that Abraham worshipped? AKA Yahweh? There is very little substantial evidence that is the case unfortunately.

While they certainly worshipped a god called El, we have no way of knowing whether it was the same El as the one Israel worshipped. El is just translated "God" in the OT because it was often just a generic word for God or a god.

But there is this one guy, Melchizedek. 

In Gen 14 we read about Abraham engaging in a battle against some of the kings of Canaanite city states who had taken Lot and his family captive due to their dwelling in Sodom. God provides a miraculous victory, and Lot is saved. 

After Abraham and his men won that divine victory, the King of Salem comes to Abraham with gifts of thankfulness for the protection of Abraham. 
Let's have a look at verse 18... 

"Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of El Elyon (God most high)." 
Straight away he has an interesting name made up of two words, "melek" and "sedeq". Melek is often translated as "king" while Zedek is a Canaanite deity!

DDD on Zedek: "The cult of Zedek appears to have been well established in pre-Israelite (Jebusite) Jerusalem. Some aspects of this cult apparently were translated into Yahwism; in a number of texts Righteousness appears either as a member of -Yahweh’s court or as a...

... personification of Yahweh's concern for justice. In the postbiblical period, the Righteousness tradition helped shape the thinking" 

Abraham gave tithes to the priest-king of Sedeq and seemed to have no qualms doing so. It seems that Abraham saw Melchizedek as...

... worshipping the same God that he did. The God Almighty, creator of heaven and earth!
How many other Canaanites were there who worshipped the God of Abraham? We don't know. We can speculate but I can't find anything concrete. 

What are your thoughts?

Discuss.